Rumors of a gun sale moratorium within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are greatly overstated. Sales out of the back of shady looking vans on the streets of Philadelphia will be in no way interrupted by the PICS outage. For a little extra money, the intrepid gentlemen who ply this trade will sell you one “without any bodies on it.” Isn’t that nice of them?  Buy two guns, and maybe they’ll throw in the serial number obliteration for free! Rumors are abound that many of these gentlemen will accept crack in lieu of cash. Sales are expected to be brisk.
Category: Politics
Rendell Pulls the Trigger
Two pieces of news: PICS is going down as scheduled, and Ed Rendell is a worm. Well, OK, one piece of news. Everyone already knew Rendell was a worm.
When these instant check systems were passed in legislation, we were ensured that they would never be used as a back door registration scheme, and we were assured they would stay up and running. As we all know, they have been used as a backdoor registration scheme, and now, we have this.
As I’ve said, there’s no earthly reason I can think of why this multi-day outage is necessary. I’ve seen a lot of large database and systems upgrades, but I’ve never seen anyone that’s required this kind of outage. Everyone needs to make sure to punish Rendell’s party in the next election.
Putting it Off
It looks like the PICS outage could end up being delayed. Of course, I’d still like to understand why there needs to be a multi-day outage at all. There’s no reason, other than sheer incompetence, why this should require several days.
Sam Rohrer on the PICS Outage
I agree with Rep. Rohrer on this part here:
“As House Republican Game and Fisheries Committee Chairman, I have yet to see any convincing reason for Pennsylvania gun owners and hunters to preclude the logical conclusion that this procedure is anything other than poorly planned, routine maintenance as reluctantly acknowledged by both the Rendell administration and the state police,” said Rohrer. “However, I am deeply concerned about the potential and irrevocable damage that this short-notice, PICS shutdown will have on reputable firearm dealers, especially family-owned gun shops, during one of the single busiest retail seasons of the year.”
I agree with his assessment that this was never a conspiracy to screw gun owners on the part of Rendell. I would be surprised, in fact, if his office even knew about it until the complaints starting rolling in. I am no fan of our Governor, but I’m not prepared to blame him for instigating this in order to stick it to Pennsylvania Sportsmen.
Read the whole release. I continue to wish that Rep. Rohrer represented my district. Pretty clearly he is a friend of Pennsylvania gun owners.
More on Larry Craig
The only good news that can come out of this is that a lot of people will have to confront that this kind of behavior, while not necessarily the norm among homosexuals, isn’t particularly rare, either. Unfortunately, homosexual legislators, whether open or closeted, do a lot of stuff that reminds you that homosexuals really aren’t like the rest of us. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) lover was the result of Frank answering a personal ad so vulgar that I won’t quote it–and then his lover ran a prostitution service out of Frank’s apartment. More recently, Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) sending lascivious emails to pages less than half his age, and Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA) having an affair with a page less than half his age. All of these actions make an adulterous affair seem downright classy by comparison.
Well, considering that heterosexual politicians are generally worms when it comes to sex scandals, I’m not really shocked that the gay politicians are going to represent the very worst that the gay community has to offer.
Senator Craig should go ahead and resign, and let Governor Otter name a replacement who can serve out Craig’s term with dignity and respect for the people of Idaho. (I’m available!)
I agree that Craig should resign, and let the governor appoint a successor.
Larry Craig Arrested
With friends like this, who needs enemies? It’s worth noting that he’s on the NRA board of directors.
UPDATE:
“I could see Craig look through the crack in the door from his position. Craig would look down at his hands, ‘fidget’ with his fingers, and then look through the crack into my stall again. Craig would repeat this cycle for about two minutes,†the report states.
Craig then entered the stall next to Karsnia’s and placed his roller bag against the front of the stall door.
“My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall,†Karsnia stated in his report. “From my seated position, I could observe the shoes and ankles of Craig seated to the left of me.â€
Craig was wearing dress pants with black dress shoes.
“At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,†the report states.
Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could … see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.â€
Karsnia then held his police identification down by the floor so that Craig could see it.
“With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit. Craig responded, ‘No!’ I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. … Craig said he would not go. I told Craig that he was under arrest, he had to go, and that I didn’t want to make a scene. Craig then left the restroom.â€
I couldn’t make that up if I tried! It’s a well known fact that Snowflakes in Hell does not frown upon gays or their lifestyle choices, but we do frown upon gay life style choices that involve guy-on-senator sex in the stall of an airport restroom. Based on this report, it would appear Larry Craig is an old pro at men’s room gay encounters.
We also frown on this kind of maneuver:
Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” the report states.
Kudos to the undercover officer for having the stones to haul his ass down to the station and process the arrest, as would have happened to any of us.
The real victim in all of this is, of course, Craig’s wife and family. I have to admit this all sounds very familiar, but I suppose at least Larry didn’t nominate his boy toy to a prominent anti-terrorism position, when he was by no means qualified.
Philadelphia Prison Overcrowding
Apparently Philadelphia’s prisons are filling up.  I have to wonder about this:
The increase in prison population comes at a time when the city has had a spike in fatal violence. Experts say, however, that the rising inmate count has more to do with a long-term crackdown on drug offenders in the city and tougher prison sentences.
Some small relief may be on the way. State legislation has been devised to reduce overcrowding across Pennsylvania, and part of the change could send at least 700 Philadelphia inmates to state facilities.
Well, at least the state is pitching in to keep non-violent drug offenders off the street, you know. It’s not like the city has a problem with violent offenders or anything.
The Goldkamp report also pointed out that 88 percent of inmates serving sentences were nonviolent offenders, mostly doing time for drug convictions. “When the role of drug offenders and nonviolent offenders is so pronounced, there is a sizable pool of offenders who could potentially be candidates for alternative sentencing options not now employed,” the report said.
This is more evidence that the war on drugs, which we will never win, as long as people want to do them, is something we ought to reconsider. If the state is going to have to spend money here, I’d much prefer if it were to keep violent offenders off the street, rather than drug offenders.
Favorite Things Pennsylvania
Tyler Cowen has his list. I would have to add Tastykakes, particularly Butterscotch and Jelly Krimpets. Not the Lemon or Creme filled Krimpets though; those are an abomination in the eyes of god.  It’s a great way to get your morning dose of yummy, Mayor Bloomberg approved trans-fat!
A New Deception
Bryan Miller has a new post up, and makes this claim:
These and other Newark initiatives are important because, although the bulk of illegal handguns traced from crime in the city and across the state were originally purchased out-of-state and trafficked to the Garden State (a conclusion reinforced by data published Monday by ATF, which I will analyze more closely in an upcoming entry, see [URL], it is the case that a significant portion of crime guns recovered in Newark were part of multiple sales made by in-state gun dealers.
No doubt Bryan wishes the data linked to by the ATF supported this, because he’s currently trying to get one-gun-a-month passed in New Jersey (and Pennsylvania too, by the way). But the data does not mention anything about multiple firearms sales. Multiple firearms sales are something that has to be reported to ATF currently (he won’t tell you that part), but they don’t combine that data with the trace request data.
This is an outrage …
… another example of how we shouldn’t worry too much about losing our civil liberties because of the war on terror, because we’ve already lost them fighting the war on drugs. Also, the ACLU draws a lot of people’s ire from time to time, including mine, but they do good work a lot of the time. This is one of those times.